Funny God's Plan - Girl looking at 9/11 crash picture - Did God cause this, or allow it? Is He any less responsible for just allowing it? Does the End justify the means?

God's plan: the mysterious balance between the prescriptive and the permissive will of God, the paradox of predestination and freewill.

But let's take a moment to look at this "free" will.

According to Bible, we have free will. The idea is that God did not want robots - he wanted his creatures to choose him. So in the Garden he placed the hapless First Couple, and told them not to touch that awful tree. They disobeyed of course (as any parent would have predicted), and were promptly evicted from Paradise, along with us descendants.

Then God the Beneficent sent His only Begotten Son to die for us, to provide a way back to his Bosom.

Glory! Hallelujah!

But... for those who still reject him, Hell awaits, which by all literal accounts is a very nasty place indeed, where the disobedient will suffer immensely and disproportionately for all eternity.

So, even if we were truly free to choose, which I doubt, given the inescapable cause-effect chain of our environment and genes, what sort of psychotic choice is that?

Atheist Quote of the Day

"Religion is like having a classroom where the students have to show up every day, but there's no teacher. There are a bunch of books around and no one is even sure which on is the text book. Some students insist on one book; others argue just as hard for another. Then suddenly, on the last day, the teacher appears and says he's been watching everybody the whole time. He praises the ones who chose the right text book and sends them off to have cookies and milk.